...the day we all had to grow up and leave our childhoods behind.
đșNBC Saturday Morning, November 30, 1991:
— RetroNewsNow (@RetroNewsNow) November 30, 2021
— On ‘Saved By the Bell,’ a film star comes to Bayside to shoot an anti-drug public service announcement; however, the gang feels deceived when they discover that he uses drugs pic.twitter.com/EgRVfW2RAI
Dude over at the Washington Post isn't as ga-ga as everybody else about Macca coming up with Get Back so suddenly:
Much fuss has already been made online over an early scene in which McCartney appears to stretch his mind open and snatch the song “Get Back” out of thin air, even though he’s long described his songwriting process as an outside frequency he’s suddenly able to tap into. And yes, it’s exciting to see the tune materialize beneath his fingertips so quickly, but are people really that surprised to learn that pop songs aren’t written at big oak desks with quill pens over snifters of cognac? Like life, songs just happen.
He's kind of right? McCartney is without a doubt a musical genius, but the line of great songs that suddenly came to someone as they were aimlessly dicking around on their instrument (heh heh heh) is endless. Besides, as I said a few days ago, "Let’s be honest - Get Back's a fairly simple rocker song, it’s not like we’re watching the creation of A Day in the Life". What's even more entertaining is Ringo & George helplessly staring at Paul, pretending to pay attention until he lands on the riff:
"He...he's just not going to let us go to Arby's, is he?"
Chapter 1 In Chancery
LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincolns Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.
The folks over at Vulture have a few thoughts about The Beatles after watching the glorious Get Back:
The Beatles created more music in a shorter period of time than just about any band that ever existed. Fans didn’t have to wait long at all to get new music from them. During the Get Back sessions, the White Album, released in late 1968, sat at the top of the charts in both the U.S. and the U.K. and was followed shortly by Yellow Submarine and, later that year, Abbey Road before Let It Be would finally surface as a release in 1970. Imagine getting that many new albums in that short a span from Adele or BeyoncĂ©. You can’t because it’s impossible to conceive. The universe, or at least social media, would fold in upon itself if anyone dropped that much new material that was that good these days.
"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “didn't you call this bullshit 13 years ago?"
Sigh. Yes I did, faithful readers, YES I DID:
...from 1963 – mid 1966 the Beatles put out 7 full-length albums & 13 singles. I will not even bore you with blatherings about the amazing quality of all of this material. All that work in just about 3 years…and yet when several months passed after Revolver with no music coming out from the fellas, the public was ready to pack it in. “Oh well, they had their day, they’re over.” While there are many people that still would still love the old records, the general mood was “time to move on.” Of course the public was soon hit with Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane and then Sgt Pepper, and that was it for any “they’re done” talk.
And yet a band like Blink 182 or whoever can put out one record every 5 years and we still gotta see their mugs showing up on tv, as if they fucking matter. Once you’re locked into the Hollywood crapfest, you will have a camera on you forever, no matter what. Whatever happened to the saying "It's tough to get to the top, but even tougher to stay there"? Now it's "It's tough to get to the top, but IMPOSSIBLE TO NOT STAY THERE."
Anyway, here's some asshole chucking a pillow at Paul McCartney's face as he's trying to enjoy a smoke with some strange older dude. The 1960s, amirite guys??!?!!
I've already LIVE-BLOGGED THE FIRST EPISODE, and will do the same for the remaining two over the next week or so. Mostly, I'm just super-depressed it's all over; I feel like Phil Collins said about he & his friends watching the end of A Hard Day's Night when The Beatles flew away in a helicopter, that "their stomachs ached to be with them". I guess we can only revel in this brilliant gift over and over until the next one The Beatles give us?
The Man vs. Food guy is in Iowa tonight where he'll be eating tater tots wrapped in bacon. Hmm. I dunno. I love bacon, but the tater tot is already perfect - wouldn't the bacon take away from the beautiful crunch on yon tot? I'd still like to see tater tots become a full layer on a pizza like cheese. Meanwhile, I was just in the grocery store and saw that they are now making EXTRA CRISPY tater tots. What the fuck? How do you make tater tots crispier? And are you telling me that we can make crispier tater tots and grow seedless fruit, but we still can't crack this alternative fuels riddle? REEEEally?
And I feel like if it doesn't exist already, there should be some sort of Lego-type construction art using tater-tots. How fun would that be? "Hey look, I built the Taj Mahal." CHOMP!
also: lasagna, but tater tots instead of the pasta noodles. yes? no? horny? maybe? tots/hormel chili/cheese, repeat layers? YOU'RE WELCOME!
I'll be honest: my tater tots Lego idea is still brilliant.
He was "the Quiet One, "The Dark Horse", the "serious" one, the "spiritual one, but he was also a funny motherfucker, which may have led to the Beatles becoming the Beatles:
When the Beatles' audition was over, George Martin invited them up for a chat in the control room. "We gave them a long lecture about their equipment and what would have to be done about it if they were to become recording artists," says engineer Norman Smith. "They didn't say a word back, not a word, they didn't even nod their heads in agreement. When he finished, George Martin said, 'Look, I've laid into you for quite a time, you haven't responded. Is there anything you don't like?' I remember they all looked at each other for a long while, shuffling their feet, then George Harrison took a long look at George and said, 'Yeah, I don't like your tie.' That cracked the ice for us and for the next 15-20 minutes they were pure entertainment. When they left to go home George Martin and I just sat there saying 'Phew! What to you think of that lot then?' I had tears running down my face. " Martin was later to comment that it was their wit more than their music that sold him.
Wow, 20 years. Always the youngest Beatle, that's how old he was when The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan.
The Kids in Philly tour of 2000 is one of the all-time favorite times of all my days, seeing Marah on the edge of bursting into what we thought would be a world-famous band for millions to enjoy as we did. The leaves were crispy and colorful, the Yuengling was cold and it was all happening in front of us.
Their star turn for the rest of the planet didn't happen exactly, but along the way I did pick up two of my best friends. Here's the end of one of the amazing shows at the Khyber, November 2000, with Serge pulling me onstage to "sing" Amazing Grace with them.
NOTE: despite Serge's best efforts this did NOT help me with the chicks right afterwards :(
PS - this was live rock at its peak; do yourself a favor and go through the rest of the amazing show HERE.
2022 may be shaping up to be The Year of the Reemergence of Marah! Getting ready for their Christmas show on December 11 in Philly, here's a pair of interviews with Dave & Serge Bielanko.
EPISODE 1: DAYS 1-7 January 2-10
My live-blogging of the second episode HERE
My live-blogging of the third episode HERE
TWO OVERARCHING POINTS:
GOOD: Although it makes total sense when I think about what Let it Be was to begin with, I'm fairly shocked at how much this is geared to super-fans. I *guess* I was expecting a kind of Anthology Part 2, but this is a super-inside look at how a band - THE band - works, and for a super-fan like me it is beyond intoxicating, and something I consider a gift to myself and fellow fans.
BAD: While I understand that watching them vamp through golden oldies shows us how much fun they have with each other and how much connective tissue they have with their own learned canon of rock n roll after having grown up together, it gets quite wearying. It probably takes up an entire hour, I mean camon. As much as they were musical gods, The Beatles - particularly John & Paul - were also great comedians, but we can get this across without repeatedly having to watch them them goof around to Blue Suede Shoes.
1:00 The intro to the brief “Here’s the entire career of The Beatles!” kicking off with In Spite of All the Danger does in fact make you think it’s just another part of the Anthology. Not sure why Peter Jackson, who made this entire thing for super-fans, felt the need for this run-through?
5:37 I didn’t think I’d comment during the career retrospective part but George, after being asked about the infamous dust-up in Manila, bitching that he hadn’t wanted to go to Manila in the first place is about the most George thing George could possibly have said at that moment.
10:01 Enough isn’t made of the fact that The Beatles had to wrap these recordings up so quickly because…Ringo had to start shooting a movie? Wouldn’t this be like D-Day being scheduled on June 6th because General Eisenhower had his Kick-the-Can Fantasy Draft on the 7th?
11:33 Michael Lindsay-Hogg looks like he’s 12 years old. The legend, unconfirmed, was always that Orson Welles was his father. Much like Ronan Farrow, what is is about famous kids who have unconfirmed famous fathers that makes it look like they’re pre-pubescent? MLH looks like he’s a fetus and yet he’s older than each of The Beatles!
11:33 First Beatle sighting: George!
Interesting that the first song heard in the entire doc is Lennon’s On the Road to Marrakesh, which would become Child of Nature, which would eventually become Jealous Guy, a track on his second solo album. Like All Things Must Pass and Gimme Some Truth, I don’t know why McCartney didn’t jump on this one to be on the album.
12:22 Interesting that The Beatles sit on normal, drab wooden chairs during rehearsals. I guess I'd pictured them being hoisted up by puppies dipped in gold while practicing with each other?
12:32 The idea that the band is putting themselves under the pressure of writing and recording an entire album to be presented on a live tv special is even crazier when you really that they’d released The White Album - not just an album, but a double album - JUST A MONTH AND A HALF EARLIER!!!
12:52 Lennon seems to have Don’t Let Me Down pretty well down right away but as you people recall it’s not even my favorite song called Don’t Let Me Down.
13:28 It’s pretty shocking to hear them quoting A Hard Day’s Night since in Beatles time it feels like that was a million years ago,…but it was only 4 1/2 years ago! Jesus.
14:38 It's weird that they’re basically given an airplane hangar to rehearse in and the band immediately pretty much huddles in each other’s laps.
watching paul just pull get back out of the ether is still blowing my mind lol
— not the guy (@notnotnuanced) November 28, 2021
pic.twitter.com/m5LWqCEqJR
Here's my goddaughter thinking she can do a good impression of me đ€Łđ€Łđ€Ł
Also surprising: someone took the time to put together an incomplete list of Virginia Woolf puns. đ€đ€·♂️
Besides the obvious Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, this is a good one:
A Rum of One’s Own is a Virginia Woolf-inspired cocktail featured in Tim Federle’s Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist. The recipe is as follows:
“1/2 tablespoon salted butter, at room temperature
1 teaspoon light brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 ounces dark rum
"Room temperature"! Clever!
In a review of The House of Gucci, Vulture inadvertently has hit on something:
What it’s really about, of course, is rich people being awful to one another, a genre of entertainment that speaks to our era more than superheroes do. We may want to eat the rich, but we also like to watch them, and our appetite for dramas set in the world of the one percent hasn’t decreased, even as the use of guillotine GIFs rises. Shows like Succession and movies like House of Gucci try to square these contradictions by providing a kind of escapist schadenfreude, giving their audiences a chance to peer into the existences of the unfathomably well-off while also reassuring them that to actually be one of the superrich is to be miserable.
I just don't think much of this is true. People like to THINK they nobly wish schadenfreude upon these characters, but in reality they fetishize them and with they were them. Our worship of billionaires today is nothing close to resembling the Jacobins of the French Revolution, who'd finally seen enough of the opulence thrown casual in their faces and started chopping off heads. Americans see the same and only beg for more, foolishly thinking that if we root for these people we'll become these people. They portray themselves as being "miserable" while laughing in our faces. MAGA, indeed.
Alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered live on television by Jack Ruby, which led to one of the greatest Photoshop gags of all time. Thanks Jack Ruby!
Of course a close second is my own greatest Photoshop of all time, funk you very much.
The Atlantic with some love for Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives being "a rallying cry for a country that is losing touch with itself:
I’ve been watching a lot of Triple D lately, in part because it’s one of those shows that always seems to be on, but also because it is a warm hug in television form. Pop culture may be rediscovering the truism that sincerity sells, but Triple D has been serving up communal kindness for years. I love the show’s low-stakes, no-frills premise: a tour of some of the best diners—and food trucks, and seafood shacks, and taco stands—around the country. I love the dad-jokey banter Fieri gets into with cooks as they make their restaurant’s favorite dishes together on camera.
Mostly, though, I love that Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives isn’t actually about the food. It’s a travel show, an exploration of individual places, as seen through some of the restaurants that nourish the people who live there. Diners have long doubled as symbols of thrift, of simplicity, of community. Triple D takes the symbolism one step further. It explores what the art critic Lucy Lippard called “the lure of the local,” the notion that locations on the map have depth as well as width, functioning not just as places in the world but also as ways of giving the world its meaning. In a moment when many Americans are renegotiating their relationship with their local community, Triple D is a wistful kind of paradox: It is a national show that celebrates local life. The series spotlights the quirks—the accidents of geography and history and culture—that make one area of the country just a little bit different from every other.
"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “isn't this just another blatant excuse to pay the great Shane Torres clip about Guy Fieri?"
Sigh. YES dear readers, YES it is. And you're welcome!
I've read every Beatles book there is and only just now did I hear that Michael Lindsay-Hogg first showed the final cut of the dreadful Let it Be to The Beatles on July 20, 1969...incredibly, making a Beatles moment only the SECOND biggest event of a single day!
"The Moon? They did it? Really?....okay, well maybe now's the best time for me to reveal to the world that I've been working on a little something called the 'Big Mac'..."
There are exactly two Thanksgiving movies in this life so far, and both are John Hughes classics: Dutch, of which I still think Op and I are the only two people who've ever seen it, and of course the much beloved Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Nice factoid from that flick:
In John Hughes: A Life in Film, Kirk Honeycutt wrote that one actor, who played a truck driver, was only supposed to have one line and work for one day. Hughes chose to keep him on standby. The actor ended up working enough days while the crew waited for the snow to come that he was able to make a down payment on a house. It’s very possible this was Troy Evans, who was uncredited, as the shy truck driver in the movie. He went on to appear, credited, on ER for the show’s final five seasons as Frank Martin.
"Uncredited"?!!!??! WTF? Whatever amount of cash that guy got he deserved it; totally nailed that fucking scene :)
Earlier today I posted about the Fast Food Mac & Cheese Wars...and now I see that exactly 10 years ago to this day, I posted:
Pat Robertson has apparently stepped in it by asking if macaroni & cheese for Thanksgiving Dinner is a black thing. This is a shame since this the first thing this jagoff has ever gotten right; yes, it IS a black thing!!!
Are you shook, people?
The Ringer points out the happiness of Get Back, the repudiation project of the dreadful propaganda that was the unwatchable Let it Be of 50 years ago:
They shed brilliance like skin cells. They invent, oh, you know, just the sonic landscape of my/your/Peter Jackson’s/everyone’s lifetime, messing around as if they’re a bunch of kids coming up with some new rules for tag. (In some ways, they are.) Scraps of ideas wind their way into the annals of forevermore right before our eyes. “Is Tucson in Arizona?” Lennon asks at one point while McCarthy works on “Get Back,” and in another scene, he suggests that Harrison use “… attracts me like a cauliflower” as a lyrical placeholder in “Something.”
Not everything is perfect: The boys are also clearly weary and burned out and a little suspicious of their handlers. Harrison, feeling creatively stifled, quits for a few days and rejoins. We know, as viewers, that everyone’s time together is quickly barreling to a close. But what Jackson saw in his initial perusal was that there was still happiness in the ending, that not everything was the catastrophe it had developed a reputation for being.
Sprawling in its confinement and generous in its conflict, Get Back peers
into what had been known as a dim and uncertain time for the Beatles.
And what it finds gives ancient lore both new life and new light, in a
shine-on-till-tomorrow kind of way.
I. AM. COUNTING. DOWN. THE. MINUTES. FOR. THIS!!
"Fellas if we finish these songs then CHICK FIL A IS ON ME!!!"
I wanna break the record for most pieces of macaroni and cheese stuck on a fork at one time. After all, don't we need heroes now more than ever? - XMASTIME
Two days ago HERE I mentioned Popeyes (surprisingly) getting into the mac & cheese game. And now we see Long John Silvers is dipping their beaks back into the game.
I love Popeye's. I love Long John Silvers. I love macaroni and cheese. And I have exactly zero desire to eat any of this shit. But boy oh boy, let the Macaroni & Cheese Wars rage on, gentlemen!
I knew about Thanksgiving, but do we owe Christmas being a national holiday to Abraham Lincoln too? Maybe:
Christmas had never taken root in the North. Rejecting this “heathenish” holiday, Puritan leaders in New England did what they could to suppress Christmas celebrations.
During Lincoln’s presidency, though, Christmas took on new meaning. Chiefly responsible for its transformation was the famous German American illustrator Thomas Nast, who created the modern Santa Claus and made him distinctly pro-northern and antislavery. Nast, a Lincoln devotee, put his Santa in politically charged scenarios.
Lincoln recognized the political significance of such illustrations. “Thomas Nast has been our best recruiting sergeant,” he said. “His emblematic cartoons have never failed to arouse enthusiasm and patriotism, and have always seemed to come just when these articles were getting scarce.” General Ulysses S. Grant, when asked who was “the foremost figure in civil life” during the war years, replied, “I think, Thomas Nast.”
During the second half of the Civil War, the North became more associated with Christmas. An 1863 political cartoon, “Santa Claus Visits Uncle Sam!,” showed Lincoln in a Santa outfit stuffing Union victories—Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and others—into the nation’s Christmas stocking.
Still an ugly motherfucker tho!
Just three days until The Beatles get back! See Peter Jackson’s three-part event #TheBeatlesGetBack streaming November 25 on @DisneyPlus pic.twitter.com/KrkpwfCC0r
— The Beatles (@thebeatles) November 22, 2021
No clue what the occasion for this Tweet is, but I'll gladly take it. Which Doobie you be? đ
The Doobie Brothers during the filming of their 1978 special guest appearance on the U.S. comedy show, 'What's Happening!' pic.twitter.com/oo9Ol6wDR4
— Barney Hurley (@barneyhurley1) November 22, 2021
I mentioned it to Xmastime buddy Kdawwgy because she always appreciated the riff, but I forgot to mention here that yesterday was the 10-year anniversary of a great riff, my wtf is up with people saying "at least he died doing what he loved"? Enjoy:
I don't get it when people say "well, at least he died doing what he loves best." What? How 'bout let me finishing what I love doing so much, THEN die? If I'm banging twins on top of the Pizza Hut buffet just as they're bringing the meat lovers out, do you really think I'm gonna go "gee, if only I could die right now?" or "ohmygodIhopethisneverfuckingends!!!!"? Come the fuck on. If I hafta die, I'd want it to be right before the thing I most HATE doing, so I can get out of doing it. I think only an asshole would be happy you died while trying to do what you loved, I'd think you'd be better off with them saying "yeah, as soon as he started getting raped by those dudes in bear suits he dropped dead." People are whack.
Like a lot of people I used to LOVE the Food Network, here's a old post about when it used to not suck.
đŽOn November 22, 1993, Food Network, then named TV Food Network, launched pic.twitter.com/HDllkCEABa
— RetroNewsNow (@RetroNewsNow) November 22, 2021
After mentioning this being the 53rd anniversary of the release of The White Album, exactly nobody millions of my fans have asked "Xmastime, while you love the double album the way it is with all its unique nooks and crannies, how would you slice it up as a single album?"
I humbly do so now:
Back In The U.S.S.R.
Dear Prudence
Birthday
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Sexy Sadie
Happiness Is A Warm Gun
I'm So Tired
Piggies
Blackbird
Don't Pass Me By
Mother Nature's Son
Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
Helter Skelter
Good Night
Nervously awaiting Xmastime's picks...
A couple years ago HERE I was floored by Cracker Barrel announcing that for the first time in their history, they would be serving fried chicken. How the hell, sexy 2019 Moi wondered, had they gone all that time without serving, of all dishes, fried chicken?
And now today I am gobsmacked again by Popeyes announcing they're now serving....macaroni & cheese? How the hell had a southern fried chicken place gone decade without slinging some crappy mac & cheese? Wtf?
Anyhoo, here's some chicken porn for ya - ride that train, fellas!!!!!
Obviously the date November 22 means one thing - the assassination of JFK.
BUT since we're now only 72 hours from the release of The Beatles' GET BACK documentary (I AM SQUEALING!!), it's also a reminder that 11/22 is the date that not only The Beatles second album was released - on the very day of the assassination, no less - but also, 5 years later to the day, The White Album, which some claim to be their absolute peak, was released.
On a side note, while it's become an iconic part of the Christmas season now, many claim that the reason Phil Spector's spectacular Christmas album failed upon release was that it came out within hours of the assassination as well. (Surprise: Spector did not kill JFK)
Xmastime, for decades: "great rock & roll is made up of backups and handclaps"
Oh gee, LOOKY LOOKY who agrees with me! Checkmate much, people??!!?
The Unintentional Comedy of Kids
Big Bear holds up three popsicle sticks to Cherry Bomb.
"How many popsicle sticks am I holding?"
"Ummm...2?"
"No"
"1?""No.""1?""No.""1?""No.""1?""No.""1?""No.""1?""No."
Long pause. "She's figured it out," I think.
"1?""No."
It's taken Adele to get Spotify to remove the fucking ridiculous "shuffle" as the default option for albums. How did this even happen? It drives me fucking nuts; I can understand playlists being shuffle, but artists agonize for weeks on the sequencing of their albums and then Spotify just decided to say "fuck it, we know better"? Good for Adele!
This was the only request I had in our ever changing industry! We don’t create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason. Our art tells a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended. Thank you Spotify for listening đ·♥️ https://t.co/XWlykhqxAy
— Adele (@Adele) November 21, 2021
48 years ago tonight, Xmastime superslice A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving debuted.
A few years ago while watching it dawned on me that if you need some fucked-up shady shit handled you may wanna try Woodstock since he seems perfectly happy chowing on a fellow bird:
I've been enjoying the Wonder Years reboot. It's not innovative, or "prestige tv", but it's very warm & friendly and can be downright laugh out loud funny at times. This week's episode has the greatest line of any show of the year: young Dean's school bully, Michael - the archetypal "he's 22 years old and in 9th grade, shaved during Little League and is an absolute monster" - finds some guidance in Dean's mom, who takes it upon herself to help this wayward youth, starting with a project for the science fair. From the next room Dean is jealous when he hears Michael make his mother laugh, to which he utters, "well, maybe if I got to drink beer and listen to Richard Pryor I'd be funny too". Legit LOL!!! đ€Ł
Yet somehow the question I've been screaming for years remains unanswered: how on Earth has Bill Simmons, Mr. Hoosiers himself, NOT done a Rewatchables on Hoosiers yet?!?!?!?! - XMASTIME
To celebrate The Rewatchables announcing that they're FINALLY doing Hoosiers next week, I will now list my Top 5 Sports movies. 1. Not including documentaries 2. In no order 3. I'm sure this will change in 5 minutes
Bull Durham
*61
A League of Their Own
Hoosiers
Miracle
Looks like he combined with his former Ballard High teammates - Raker & Gates - to score 54 of the Cavalier's 78 points.
"I Can't Goddam Wait for The Beatles Get Back Documentary to Air on Thanksgiving Month" rolls on, and here we see a quote from Paul McCartney about the area businessmen in London who were annoyed at their legendary rooftop concert in January of 1969:
...the Beatles could still tease out the prejudices of age and class. This is shown by the responses of a gaggle of businessmen who gather in the doorway of 2 Savile Row. “I think it’s a bit of an imposition to absolutely disrupt all the business in this area."
When I ask Paul McCartney about these scenes, he mentions a sequence from the first Beatles film, 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night. The four are portrayed confronting a bowler-hatted commuter who objects to sharing space with them in a train compartment. He responds to Ringo Starr blaring music from a radio with a line that, back then, was common currency: “I fought the war for your sort.”
“There’s always the guy in the bowler hat who hates what you’re doing,” says McCartney. “But you’ve got to remember, as we always did, there’s the people who work for that guy. There’s the young secretaries, the young guys in the office, or the tradesmen or the cleaners. Those are the people who like us. We always knew that there’s the establishment, then there’s the working people. And we were the working people. Working people tended to get us, and understand what we were doing. And occasionally, you would get the kind of snob who would get angry. In a way, that was part of the fun.”
Here's the scene. Enjoy, people of Earth!
Photo and the following quote from Dan Shaughnessey's new Celtics book, Wish It Lasted Forever:
Sports Illustrated in 2009 declared: "From the mid-1970s to the early '80s, the Globe contained arguably the greatest collection of reporting talent ever assembled in a sports section; one that was unrivaled in its time and is sure never to be duplicated."
Not sure why with all that gushing they used the word "arguably", but okay.
I have no idea why I'm finding out 11 days late, but Maureen Cleave, a British journalist who was one of the first music writers to introduce readers to The Beatles, has died at 87. Of course she played a part in one of rock's most famous/ridiculous moments:
Her biggest moment stemmed from an interview with Lennon published in March 1966, in which she delved into his thoughts on organized religion. “Christianity will go,” he said. “It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I know I’m right and will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first — rock ’n’ roll or Christianity.”
Readers, and the rest of the British press, paid little notice. But in July, a month before the Beatles began a tour of the United States, the American magazine Datebook reprinted the interview, and it provoked a frenzy.
Lennon’s remark, which came to be widely known as a claim that the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus,” prompted demonstrations and drew the ire of many American Christians. Lennon was accused of blasphemy — as, by extension, was Ms. Cleave.
Even after squirming out an apology, Lennon gets a definite LOL at the 1:37 mark đ€Ł
Buzzfeed has 50 great quotes from What We Do in the Shadows, an Xmastime superslice of superslices. Enjoy them all, and this will always be my favorite đ€Łđ€Łđđ
For full run-down of the day, CHECK IT OUT HERE.
Apparently there's a "how the fuck did Larry Bird end up at Indiana State?" movie in the works:
Wood, along with Steve Zukerman are in the midst of making a movie about the untold story of how Hodges persuaded Bird to play for him.
The "Untitled French Lick Project" — yet to be named — will be filmed in Indiana and Georgia this spring. The finished movie will be a sports drama, a film that conjures up the same emotions as "Hoosiers," "Rudy" and "Rocky," Wood says.
But this movie isn't the story of Larry Bird. Wood and Zukerman want to make that clear. This is the story of Bill Hodges.
"Getting Bird, this was Hodges' Hail Mary," said Wood, writer and director of the film. "This was his last chance at greatness."
Right now, it seems like the odds of the movie actually happening are about 5%. Also, to any real Bird fan this whole story is not "untold" at all.
All that said, I hope it happens and I will be first in line! :)
"We're in deep shit Larry, whaddya think?"
"Give me the ball."
"Great!"
"Who are you again?"
